


Give, Said the Little Stream

by aireyv



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Gen, alternate universe - Mormon missionaries, inspired by some two-bit bully on tumblr, you know who you are :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 22:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14882129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aireyv/pseuds/aireyv
Summary: “Oh, Elder. You don’t need to do better, you just need to do good. You’re doing fine exactly where you are.”





	Give, Said the Little Stream

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 70% of this, like, a year ago. Just had to wait until I was released to post it so I wouldn't doxx myself (again) LOL  
> This is the conceptual opposite of a self-insert in the sense that everything in here actually happened to me. Oh, yes, details have been changed to fit the character (obviously!), and events have been greatly condensed - I’ll explain in the endnote what was changed - but everything in here is _true_. This was actually a lot of fun to write! Though, I did cry writing it. Btw, I'm including footnotes but I'm not going to explain most of the cultural references so feel free to ask in the comments
> 
> Also, alternate summary h/t hingabee  
> 

Eli Sears’ patriarchal blessing was the most ominous one his mother had ever heard, but it mentioned missionary work no less than six times and he was a member of the tribe of Ephraim, but that didn’t really influence his desire to get out there. And it wasn’t just because as a young LDS male it was expected of him, either, although there _might_ have been a _bit_ of a desire to prove himself. Truthfully he’d always been rather excited about it.

Everything outlined in a patriarchal blessing is supposed to come true so long as one sticks with the Church, so to be perfectly honest they were a tad self-fulfilling, but the confident “If the Patriarch said so, then it _will_ happen” is exactly what Eli fell back on the day he and his twin brother, David, got the results of their pre-mission psyche evaluations back from LDS Family Services. (They happened to be in a stake that required it for all prospective missionaries, not just those already diagnosed with some mental illness or another, not that that applied to Eli or anything.)

Perfect friggin’ _David_ got by no problems. _Eli_ had managed to raise seven out of nine possible red flags.

“ _Manic episodes??_ ” Eli said incredulously, staring at the sheet of paper in his hands, “I don’t have _manic episodes_.”

“That’s what the evaluation said,” said the Family Services counselor with a shrug. “But this doesn’t mean you can’t go on a mission, it just means there will be a bit of a delay.”

Certainly the delay was frustrating, especially as David went on with the rest of his application and got it sent off to the Church headquarters in Salt Lake City with no issues whatsoever. But it was just a _delay_. It was just a little extra time he had to spend at home even though his 18th birthday had just passed. And some of that extra time was spent in therapy. (Eli even found the therapist, did all the scheduling, and paid the copays on his own.)

By some ham-fisted miracle, he was able to land weekly appointments, starting next week, after about 45 minutes of calling around and only finding availabilities for singular sessions several months down the line. He filled out the paperwork mostly by himself and indicated that his therapist was supposed to share his progress with the Family Services counselor and his bishop.

He kind of regretting doing that when he got diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But there wasn’t really a way around it, so…

Time dragged on and on and David got his mission call while Eli was still in therapy limbo. Helsinki, Finland mission. Finnish-speaking, obviously. It wasn’t that Eli was _jealous_ so much as it was the fact that he’d always hoped _he’d_ get sent on a foreign-language mission abroad and right now he and the bishop were discussing that new program where one goes a transfer or two in a mission close to home just as a kind of trial period, _then_ gets a “real” call elsewhere - which as far as anyone knew was _always_ stateside.

When David left for the airport to go the MTC, their younger brother George went with him to say goodbye, while Eli just waved and stayed home even though he would be off on his _own_ mission when David returned. Whatever.

David was nine months into his mission when Eli’s application finally made it to Salt Lake, after almost a year of therapy sessions, frequent meetings with the bishop, stake president, and Family Services counselor, and at least one tantrum about how Eli didn’t want to take medication because he didn’t ever want to be restricted to areas where said medication would be readily available. Every morning from that point on Eli would run out and check the mailbox, eagerly anticipating the large white envelope that he knew calls came in. Sometimes he’d check the mail multiple times a day and had on more than one occasion glared at the USPS truck passing without dropping anything off at the Sears house.

David was eleven months into his mission when Eli was pulled out of gospel doctrine class for an impromptu meeting with the bishop.

“I heard back from the missionary department,” Bishop Campbell said evenly.

“Oh,” Eli said. “Okay…?” He wasn’t really sure what to expect, if it was about his call that was supposed to be mailed to him, maybe there had been something wrong with the paperwork? Geez, he really hoped that wasn’t the case, but it _did_ seem like the kind of thing that _would_ happen to him…

“I think it’s better if I be blunt. You’ve been rejected.”

There was a long pause.

“Pardon?” Eli said, quickly convincing himself he hadn’t heard Bishop Campbell right.

“I’m afraid you aren’t currently qualified to serve a mission. I’m very sorry, I know how much you-“

“Can I… can I reapply? Try again? Is there something I need to work on? I don’t mind waiting or-”

“No. I’m afraid not. I’m sorry, Eli, it’s over. You’ve been honorably excused.”

Again, there was a long pause. The words _honorably excused_ and _it’s over_ rang in Eli’s head, and he bit back tears. All the waiting, all the hard work - all his _life_ \- and _this_ is what the Church had to say about it?

“I don’t- I don’t understand,” he stammered. “M-My patriarchal blessing says—“

“It must mean later in life, after you’ve retired and can serve with your wife.”

“But - it said I’d _meet_ my wife at the completion of my mission!“

“I can’t tell you what it means, Eli. I’m sure you’ll know it when you see it.”

“I- but— this isn’t _fair_ ,” he said, standing up, “I just- after everything—- I d-don’t… I don’t get it… how…? _Why?_ ”

Bishop Campbell looked down at the e-mail open on his iPad. “Your bipolar disorder. There’s too much risk of you unintentionally causing problems during a manic episode, or choosing to go home during a depressive episode. A mission is hard, Eli, even for people who don’t have your disadvantages. Not everyone can do it.”

“But I can. I’m sure I can!”

“Eli, I don’t make the decision. The missionary department does. _Heavenly Father_ does.”

So that was that. It was over. Eli went back to gospel doctrine, and when his mother, Eva, whispered to him to ask him what the bishop wanted to see him for, he just muttered something about it being related to his mission and she didn’t ask for clarification. He saw the bishop about something related to his mission just about every Sunday. Right after that Eli said he had a headache and borrowed the car keys, spending the remaining hour and a half of church lying in the backseat of the minivan and staring at the ceiling.

This had to be the worst day of his _life_.

It wasn’t until the ride home that Eli flatly announced that he wasn’t going to be able to serve a mission.

“Another delay?” his father grunted. “Giving up?”

“No,” Eli said, “the missionary department rejected me.”

He didn’t respond to anything the rest of his family had to say about that, and when they got home, instead of joining them for lunch he just went up to his room, slammed the door, and slept for sixteen hours.

Monday morning he was woken up by the family cat, Nuke, licking his face, closely followed by Eva sitting on the side of his bed.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“…I’ve been better.”

“I talked to the stake president,” Eva said.

Eli sat up, but started petting Nuke so he wouldn’t have to look at his mother.

“He said you talked with him about serving a part-time mission from home a while back.”

“Yeah,” Eli mumbled, “but I don’t want to do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s temple stuff. Temple stuff is confusing, I know I’ll screw it up somehow.”

“Well,” Eva said, also petting Nuke - who had to be happiest dang cat in the world right now - “what about a service mission? I looked it up on the Church website, there are plenty of opportunities for service missionaries.”

Eli just grunted. He was thinking about giving up his life’s dream entirely and just going off to college as soon as the next semester started. He didn’t want to live at home anymore, he was already nineteen years old and…

“There’s a lot more you can do in Salt Lake City than around here, though,” Eva went on, “so I called your uncle in Utah. He lives pretty close to Salt Lake, and said he’d be fine with you moving in to serve a mission.”

“Wha…?” Eli finally looked up at his mother.

She shrugged. “Just because you can’t go proselyting doesn’t mean you can’t be a missionary. Call the bishop about it today, okay?”

So that was how Eli found out that in less than two months, he’d be moving all the way across the country to live with an uncle he hadn’t talked to since he was, like, twelve. Everything seemed happen all at once, now; it was like he’d spent the last year waiting and waiting at a train station, only for the train to suddenly crash into the platform with no warning and the conductor to scream “All aboard!” at him. That comparison was only enforced when he got a random phone call from a YCSM (young church service missionary) coordinator out in Salt Lake who was looking forward to meeting him.

Exactly one month after his rejection, he got a large white envelope in the mail. It contained a letter with his official call, a Young Church-Service Missionary Guiding Principles handbook, and one of those iconic little black nametags that he’d been waiting his whole life to wear.

_ELDER SEARS_ , it said in white letters, and just underneath it, in smaller letters, _YOUNG CHURCH SERVICE MISSIONARY_. And below that, _THE_ _CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS_.

Despite the celebration at his call finally coming in, and his mother scolding George for saying that Eli wasn’t going on a ‘real’ mission, it didn’t really sink in with Eli, not until later. Not until it was late, and he was back in his room - which was pretty gutted, just about everything he owned had been packed away into boxes to be either shipped to his Uncle Venom’s house or shoved in the basement until he went off to college — he glanced over at his bookshelf, which was empty except the contents of the large white envelope that he had tiredly dumped there about twenty minutes before.

His nametag was sitting on top of everything else.

And he thought, _Wow._

_I was almost starting to think I wasn’t going to make it_.

* * *

Before the month was out he had gotten a hair cut (much to his displeasure), given his farewell talk, got set apart, and was trundled off to the airport to be shipped off to faraway, exotic Utah. He had lunch with his parents at a nice restaurant before he went, Eva berated his father for forgetting to give Eli a father’s blessing (which they had to do tucked behind an escalator, because it was the only relatively private spot near the security line Eli had been about to join), and then she had cried when he was walking off.

One guy noticed Eli’s tag - the stake president had told him to wear it while he was travelling - and asked if he was headed out or going home.

“Headed out,” Eli said. He was, as always, marginally surprised to meet another Mormon, and he knew in the back of his mind that that was going to change very soon.

When he got to Utah, he had to admit to himself that he had never expected that he’d suffer culture shock without even leaving the country.

At first it was just the little things, like how _white_ it was compared to where he was from, and the fact that all the streets were numbered on a grid (Eli was used to winding, curved roads meandering around with unique if sometimes confusing names) and people actually used words like “north” and “west” when giving directions somewhere. Then it was the bigger things, like how there were LDS chapels every few blocks and each ward was only about two or three streets of a neighborhood, but still managed to be almost _bigger_ than the wards in the stake Eli had come from, which had covered a sizeable chunk of their part of the state. Salt Lake City was curiously devoid of graffiti, people were unsettlingly friendly and said “Oh my heck!” unironically, and everyone seemed to have a cryptid sighting story about spotting President Utchdorf at Costco and know all the words to every single song in the hymnbook - seriously though, who took the time to memorize all the lyrics to If You Could Hie to Kolob??

Eli hadn’t realized until now how intrinsic being LDS was to his identity, though, mostly because back where he came from, it made him unique. He went to a large high school that only had enough LDS students to support two seminary classes (or, technically, one - two wards funnelled into that high school, so for the most part they stayed separate, but sometimes they had combined lessons and all the students didn’t quite fill a single classroom)… out here, seminary was almost literally just another class at school, as ubiquitous as algebra, and didn’t happen early in the morning. Back home, meeting another Mormon meant that he automatically had something in common in them, something that differentiated them from everyone else, and someone who understood what it was like to belong to a religion and subculture that no one else understood - but meeting another Mormon outside of church was rare and special, and most of the time, he’d been the only one. He’d been “the Mormon”.

Out here he was just _a_ Mormon.

It was _weird_.

Between the culture shock, the odd loss of part of his identity and the feeling of being just another face in the crowd instead of his own person, the nervous anticipation of his first day on his mission coming up on Monday, and the general stress of moving across the continent, Eli didn’t talk much to either his uncle or his uncle’s wife, Quiet. Fortunately they seemed fairly content to let him hole up in the room they had provided and unpack.

He got up at 6:00 Monday morning, got dressed, put on his shoes and tie and the nametag he’d worked so hard to get, and Venom drove him to the train station in the next town. He took the southbound FrontRunner train to Salt Lake Central station, then got on the UTA bus route 509, which had a stop right across the street from where he was to report to. Whole thing took about an hour and a half.

Welfare Square.

The flagship of the Church’s welfare program. Eli had never heard of it until he’d talked to YCSM coordinator over the phone, but it seemed like everyone out _here_ knew where it was and what it did.

It was an unassuming campus in the middle of the sketchy part of Salt Lake City, consisting of a cannery, a dairy, a Deseret Industries, an employment center, a bakery, and a bishops’ storehouse, where Eli would be serving until/unless he was transferred to the cannery or dairy. Towering over it all was a gigantic grain elevator with the words _WELFARE SQUARE — THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS_ emblazoned over golden stalks of wheat.

The YCSM coordinator, a shrunken old man with a voice like a general authority’s (Eli would find out later that he had once served in the Second Quorum of the Seventy, which was close enough, honestly), shook Eli’s hand as soon as he walked in and showed him to the break room, where he was given a locker and had the opportunity to meet one of the other missionaries here, the zone leader, an unassuming-looking guy only a few years older than Eli.

“Welcome to the Helaman zone,” he said, “do you know which district you’re in?”

“Er… no,” Eli said.

“You’re in the Romney district.”

Naturally Eli’s first thought was _Mitt_ Romney, which wouldn’t make sense, but he quickly learned that it was actually the _Marion G._ Romney district, and everyone else also made that association anyway. By his second day there, Eli had accidentally coined the term “Romneyites” to refer to those in the Romney district, in opposition to the “Rudders”, or those in the Glen L. Rudd district, the other district in the Helaman zone.

“You’re not supposed to have knives here, didn’t you read the handbook?” the zone leader said as Eli was rooting through his bag looking for his sandwich so he could put it in the fridge.

“I didn’t mean to leave it in my bag,” Eli said heatedly, embarrassed and irritated, shoving his bag in his locker. “It won’t happen again.”

“No, it’s fine,” the zone leader said, then pulled out his own pocketknife. “We have to cut tape off of boxes a lot, and the boxcutters here are really crappy, so most of us bring our own knives.”

Eli wandered over and looked at the zone leader’s knife appreciatively, comparing it to his own. His was slightly smaller, but much easier to open with one hand.

“You like knives too, huh?”

“Well, yes,” Eli said, “they’re… useful.”

The zone leader nodded. “A few years ago I got jumped. I had my knife on me, so I stabbed the guy and ran off. I never found out if he lived or died,” he added thoughtfully.

Eli stared at him, eyebrows raised. “You didn’t stick around for the cops?”

“I was high at the time. It didn’t seem like a good idea.”

Eli put his knife in his pocket. Alright. Here for less than twenty minutes, and already he’d found out that his zone leader may or may not have killed someone. They really let anyone on service missions, didn’t they? He should have suspected as much with how simple the application was…

Later in the day Eli would hear from one of the other elders that that hadn’t been the only time the zone leader was jumped. The other time, though, had a more definitive outcome: the zone leader had been packing heat at the time and had given his mugger a Mozambique drill.

So, with a zone leader who was a former junkie and had a definite body count, Eli decided that he was going to like it here.

The morning devotional started at 8:15 and Eli was forced to get up in front of the podium and introduce himself (which he would end up doing three times that day, and twice again tomorrow). “I… I’m Elder Sears, and,” he struggled to come up with something interesting about himself, “I’m from metropolitan Atlanta, and I…” He briefly considered mentioning that his twin brother was on a mission in Finland, but he decided firmly to leave him out of this for the sake of his own ego. “I like camping and martial arts.”

There were a couple mumbled welcomes and Eli quickly sat back down, avoiding any and all eye contact.

Someone gave a spiritual thought, which he didn’t listen to at all, then assignments for the day, which Eli heard his name under ‘hosting’ but as of right now had no idea what that was. Presumably that would be resolved soon. Just as they were letting out Eli realized he had no idea who his district leader was (he assumed that was important) until one of the other elders came up and introduced himself as such — and also introduced him to an elder with curly, bright red hair, sleepy eyes, and one of those face masks often seen in animé. …in hospitals, rather. (Agh. David’s dumb friend from high school was _still_ getting on his nerves.)

“This is Elder Rebenok,” the Romney district leader said, and Rebenok shook Eli’s hand with an air of begrudgingness. “He’ll be training you on all the assignments here this week.”

“Great,” Eli said, rather flatly.

“I sincerely hope you’ll be able to pick them all up quickly,” Rebenok said, his voice dry, “I don’t like explaining things over and over.”

Eli hid a scowl. _Rude_ , but then again some of the other YCSMs in this zone had developmental disabilities severe enough for Eli to notice just by being in the same room as them for fifteen minutes, so maybe giving him the opposite of the benefit of the doubt was only fair. …no, Eli was sure he had every right to be annoyed…

As revenge, as soon as the district leader wandered off, Eli pointedly asked Rebenok what was up with the mask, with a side implication of ‘And how did _you_ get honorably excused from a proselyting mission’.

“Why would I tell you that?” Rebenok replied snidely.

“Rebenok, are you being a jerk to the fresh meat again?”

Rebenok just rolled his eyes, but Eli turned around to see one of the sisters standing behind them - one of only three in the zone, and the only one who didn’t have Down’s Syndrome and/or wasn’t morbidly obese. In fact she was quite pretty, with long viridescent blonde hair and a figure that, if Eli were one to make lame _Johnny Lingo_ references like everyone else in this state apparently, would certainly warrant eight cows.

“Hi,” Eli said lamely, trying not to stare at her.

“Hello,” she said, her hands still on her hips. Just as well that she didn’t shake his hand, Eli felt rather clammy all of a sudden. “I am Sister Wolf, I’m also in the Romney district… I am actually the sister training leader, so if Rebenok is explaining things poorly, just ask me about it. I actually know how to train people.”

“Except for the meats,” Rebenok said, “you have never even _been_ in the freezer.”

“Sisters are not _assigned_ to the freezer… thank God for that. Rebenok, you’re showing him how to host today, no?”

A bell dinged from the reception desk. Eli glanced over. There was a haggard-looking man standing in front of it while the CSM (church service missionary) at the desk attached a sheet of paper to a clipboard and jotted something down in the binder in front of her. Rebenok sighed.

“Just watch what I do, Sears,” he said, walking over, “and be as pleasant as possible.”

“Er… right.”

So here was how a bishops’ storehouse worked:

Everyone has a bishop, more or less. If someone had a permanent (or semi-permanent) residence, then who their bishop was was decided based off of geographical location… not religious affiliation. Anyone, whether or not they belonged to the Church, had a right to talk to their bishop and, if they were struggling, request aid — sometimes in the form of merchandise credit for the Deseret Industries or even outright cash, but typically a food order. For those living on the streets or in shelters or halfway homes, Welfare Square had a Transitional Services Office which had an in-house bishop who could also issue food orders. (Relief Society presidents _also_ did food orders, but it was rare that they handled nonmembers.)

The bishop gives the struggling person an order number, which is taken to the bishops’ storehouse, where one of the CSMs would use the order number to pull up the order on the Church’s computer network, and print it out. Then the order was recorded and handed off to a YCSM, who would escort the order-holder (usually referred to as a “patron”) around the storehouse, reading off their order form for them and making sure that they got everything… and that they _only_ got what was ordered.

The bishops’ storehouse more or less resembled a small grocery store, except without any advertising or cash registers. About 80% of the products were produced by the Church, so most of the stuff was branded _DESERET_. “Hosting” was the escorting process; it mostly entailed pushing the cart around and waiting for the patron to finish putting their things in the plastic bags. And occasionally interrupting them to say that, yes, it was required that they put that ten-pound bag of flour in the grocery sack and no, you can only swap items on the order form in the same category. Changing out a can of corn for a can of green beans was fine; switching a bag of spaghetti for a pack of diapers was not. And please, if the milk is going on the bottom of the cart, keep the jug upright.

Other than that, it was mostly about pointing out item locations, recording the items received and having the patron sign the form once they were done. Since it was his first day, Eli didn’t exactly have a handle on the item locations yet, but everything was _roughly_ in the same order on the shelves (provided a particular meandering path through the storehouse was followed) as they were on the sheet, so he was confident he’d have it all mapped out in his mind by the end of the day.

“So did you get all that?” Rebenok said after the patron declined the (obligatory) offer of assistance in carrying his groceries out.

“Seems simple enough,” Eli said with a shrug.

“It was not a very big order… TSO orders typically aren’t. When you do get a large order,” Rebenok said, jerking his head towards the bathrooms, “leave the cart over there, in the alcove, and simply get a new one.”

“Ah… I suppose that’s why we’re supposed to write down the cart numbers, then?”

“That, and so that we will know who’s been stealing our carts… or returning them to the DI instead of to us.”

Rebenok slipped the completed form into the in-tray in the office, and then, since it was rather a slow day and there wasn’t another immediate patron, explained facing shelves to Eli. Which was literally just moving product around so it looked nice.

“…brings things out from the warehouse, so if you aren’t busy and see a blue flat cart with boxes on it, just go ahead and open them and put things were they belong. ‘Stocking’ and ‘hosting’ are virtually identical assignments. Be aware that no matter what assignment you have, you may be asked to host if it is busy — hosting always takes top priority.”

“That makes sense…”

Rebenok glanced over to the door, and the visible part of his face scrunched up in distaste. “Oh,” he said, “a Polynesian family just walked in.”

Eli turned around. “…what’s the problem?” he said, shooting Rebenok an annoyed glance.

“Trust me, Sears: Spend enough time at a bishops’ storehouse, and you will _quickly_ learn to respect and _fear_ Polynesians.”

“That seems kind of racist.”

The reception desk bell dinged.

A full hour and five carts later, Eli and Rebenok waved goodbye to the Polynesian family, and as soon as they were gone Eli theatrically collapsed against the wall.

“Is _that_ what you meant by a large order?!”

“I meant an order with two carts… but Polynesians are on a different level entirely. Large families, and they eat a lot culturally… that was fairly normal.”

“Dang… I could certainly use a break after that.”

Rebenok glanced up for the clock. “It is close enough to 10:00 for one…”

10:00 was the Romney district break time, so in addition to the other YCSMs that Eli hadn’t learned/bothered remembering their names yet, they saw Wolf again, who had evidently been assigned to stocking dairy or produce in the cooler that day. She smiled at them both, so Eli sat down next to her, and Rebenok sat down next to him, possibly out of a sense of awkward obligation towards his trainee.

As it turned out, breakroom conversation was mostly gossip. Rebenok didn’t contribute much, but Wolf was absurdly candid, rattling off a list of elders she disliked because they were lazy, flakey, or took any criticism or suggestion as an attack on their authority as assistant district leader. She really didn’t seem to care that at least one of the elders she called out was sitting in the same room.

She even criticized Rebenok right in front of him. “He did tell you,” she said to Eli, “that you are supposed to be as pleasant as possible while hosting someone, yes? You are supposed to smile and be extremely polite and friendly.”

“He told me, yes,” Eli said. “Showed by example, no.”

“There’s a _reason_ why he can often get away with not hosting,” Wolf said wisely, “Rebenok is too sarcastic and usually has an extremely short temper. He makes patrons uncomfortable.”

“You could at least have the decency to have this conversation behind my back, Wolf,” Rebenok said.

After break was scripture study (at least for the Romney district; Rudd scripture study was in the morning). If there was one thing Eli learned in his years of seminary and Sunday school, it was how to not even remotely pay attention and still follow along enough to know which verses he was supposed to read out loud when it was his turn. It would have been completely unnoticeable if everyone else didn’t also know how to do this.

After scripture study, more hosting. More stocking. More facing shelves. Wolf asked Eli to come to the big cooler, where the produce and dairy products (plus eggs) were stored.

“What’s the problem?” he said, looking around. Rebenok loitered next to the door, watching Wolf warily.

Wolf gestured to the crates of milk in the back corner, next to the yogurt. “I need a big, strong elder to get the milk for me,” she said, batting her eyelashes.

“Don’t do it,” Rebenok warned.

Eli glanced back at him dismissively. “What’s the worst that can happen?” He turned back to her. “What do you need?”

“Two crates of chocolate and fill the rest up with white. It’s coming off rotation. Maybe you should get another cart…”

Each cart could hold twelve crates of milk, so it ended up being a lot of lifting and Eli quickly regretted deciding to lift two crates stacked on top of each other at a time (okay, in order to show off) but he wasn’t about to back down. In the end when Wolf cheerily returned to the smaller cooler that patrons grabbed their things from, Eli’s arms were sore.

“…you idiot,” Rebenok said. “Now she knows that she can use her looks to fool you into doing things.”

“I was just being nice.”

“You were trying to impress her.”

Eli shrugged. “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

“…I have no opinion.”

Lunch was at noon. Eli felt a little awkward that everyone else had full, well-balanced lunches or at least dinner leftovers while he himself just had a block of ramen and a tupperware container to microwave it in. No one commented though, not even Rebenok.

After lunch was afternoon training, a half-hour lesson that both zones (everyone in the storehouse, and everyone in the dairy and cannery) sat around in the conference room for. Again Eli was forced to introduce himself, and then one of the CSMs who helped run the cannery gave the lesson. It was about financial responsibility or something, Eli figured out in the first five minutes that he didn’t have to pay attention since it was stuff he already knew - he tended to save his money instead of impulsively spend it (mostly because he could hardly ever remember the PIN on his debit card), and he’d earned plenty of money on his own by scamming George. Rather, loaning George money and charging interest on him being too broke to pay it all back immediately. However, it seemed that some of the other YCSMs benefited greatly from being told that credit cards are not magic plastic rectangles of free money whenever they wanted it.

And then back to the grind. Rebenok disappeared on him entirely. Eli, bewildered, asked Wolf if he went home early or something, but no, he just had a tendency to do that. Not slack off, really, just run off to go find some job he could do that _didn’t_ require talking to any of his fellow missionaries and especially not patrons.

“They really need to transfer him over to the cannery,” Wolf said. “It is too noisy there to socialize much, _and_ you don’t have to dodge tourists.” She sniffed. “Of course, they don’t send _sisters_ over there except in emergencies…”

“…right,” Eli said. Dodging tourists was something he’d figured out that morning; tours through the Square ran every hour on the hour, so shortly before said hour a tour would wrap up with a stroll through the bishops’ storehouse. They did get in the way, but the Temple Square sisters who ran the tours were good at preventing the tourists from trying to interact with the service missionaries or worse, the poor embarrassed patrons. “Isn’t he still supposed to be training me, though?”

Wolf shrugged. “You are just stocking and hosting,” she said, “those are the easiest jobs.” (That was probably true. The sister with Down’s Syndrome was the storehouse’s best host, and a nonverbal elder with rather low-functioning autism stocked shelves almost exclusively.) “You should be fine on your own.”

“I… suppose so.”

With no Rebenok to unceremoniously derail the conversation, Eli’s trips around the storehouse with patrons started to get bogged down with unnecessary life stories. Eli hardly listened at first, but soon did. Sordid tales of addiction and homelessness he expected; the same could be said of refugees describing in broken English (or… no English, but Rebenok had said that morning that Eli would quickly learn the art of pantomime) the countries they left behind. Those were the stereotypical welfare recipients (down to one well-dressed lady who rolled up to the storehouse parking lot with a brand-new car nicer than either of Eli’s parents drove. Eli initially thought she was just here to pick up a friend or family member’s order. She was not).

But aside from homeless people (usually in need of a shower and a psychiatrist) and poor immigrants, a lot of the patrons who talked to Eli were pretty average people, lower- or middle-class, who were between jobs and just needed a little help to get by. They’d probably never be back here — in fact, there were very few regulars. Most people would get help for a few weeks then get back on their feet _somehow_ , or, Eli thought pessimistically, die in a gutter somewhere in that shady-looking Rio Grande neighborhood over by the train station.

Rebenok appeared in time to tell Eli when his break was. Eli was in the middle of an order and unsure of what to do, so he just completed it - ending it with a passing Wolf laughing at him for stumbling over the words “sanitary napkins” - and took a late break, which Rebenok took as his chance to pointlessly extend his _own_ break by another fifteen minutes.

“You have a right to a break, you know,” Rebenok said.

“I was busy, Rebenok,” Eli said shortly.

“Just find someone to take over for you. It is not horrendously busy today, you are just getting back-to-back patrons since you take so long doing one.”

Eli twitched. “We get to talking, I can’t help it! That man just now, he was telling me about his highly successful law practice that crashed and burned around the time his wife took everything in the divorce—“

Rebenok waved a hand. “We get six of those guys a day,” he said. “Don’t get too hung up on individual tragedies, you will get burned out.”

“This is a welfare program.”

“And you’re of no use to it if you burn out.”

“Hm.”

Rebenok sat back in his chair, rolling his eyes. “If, by the time you complete your service here, you are not a much more jaded and cynical person, you’ve done something wrong,” he said very seriously. “But by the same token, if you’re released and you do not have an increased testimony of service, you haven’t done anything right.”

Eli half-smiled. “That sounds like a book I read once.”

“ _The Brothers Karamazov_ , maybe?” Rebenok sat up, looking more interested in the conversation all of a sudden.

Eli’s smile widened. “‘The more I love mankind in general,’” he quoted, “‘the less I love man in particular.’ Father Zosima said it, I think.”

If this were a video game, then Eli would have just advanced his s-link with Rebenok.

Wolf walked in the room and immediately went for the fridge, grabbing the jug of chocolate milk and pouring herself a glass. “Oh, Sears,” she said, “have you tried this milk?”

“No,” Eli said, blinking at the sudden shift in atmosphere. Maybe spending a year with pretty much just George to talk to hadn’t done good things for his social skills…

“It is basically the best in the world, you _have_ to try some. I’ll pour you a cup.”

“Don’t be too nice to him now, Wolf,” Rebenok snarked as Wolf put Eli’s chocolate milk down in front of him, sitting across the table next to Rebenok. “Haven’t you said that elders with crushes on you need to take a number and get in line?”

“I give fast passes to elders who aren’t literally retarded.”

“That reminds me,” Rebenok said abruptly, turning to Eli, “you need to go buy a bus pass.”

“I don’t have any money,” Eli said flatly.

“Bring some tomorrow. A check written to the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric - or COPB works - for… you take the train, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“$79.20,” Wolf said.

Eli made a mental note.

Break was over soon after that. Eli managed to catch Rebenok before he disappeared again - rather literally, he grabbed his arm - but Rebenok said roughly the same thing that Wolf said earlier, that he had the hang of things already and didn’t need him showing him around for the rest of the day. Rebenok then stalked off to the warehouse, giving Eli the impression that he shouldn’t follow him. Eli returned to the front just as the bell rang _again_.

3:45 Eli had just returned a completed order to the front office when Rebenok suddenly appeared behind him, backpack in hand and badge off. Eli gave him a quizzical look.

“Well?” Rebenok said pointedly.

“I was under the impression that we were open until four.”

“Yes, but you take the bus, no? We need to leave now if we expect to catch.”

“Oh— really? But I thought the bus didn’t come until-“

“509 is never on time,” Rebenok said, with the almost sing-song inflection of a mnemonic. Evidently that was something that got said a lot around here.

Eli walked back to the breakroom and his locker quickly, grabbing his things. According to the bus schedule, it only came down here once every hour, and he didn’t know if it’d be a good idea to walk back to the train station - it probably wasn’t too long a walk, since the bus ride wasn’t overly-long, but he didn’t know the route and was wary of getting lost in this part of town. (Though it was certainly the cleanest, safest-looking city he’d ever personally seen. Probably because it was small and filled with Mormons.)

“Take off your badge,” Rebenok said as they left the storehouse, gesturing to his shirt pocket. “We can’t wear those on public transportation.”

“Oh?”

“Do you know how many missions there are in Salt Lake City? …at a glance we look exactly the same as any proselyting missionary. So if someone sees us travelling alone and we have our badges on, half a dozen mission presidents get calls about it.”

“It is also a safety issue for sisters,” Wolf said - she was waiting at the bus stop a bit ahead of them, but caught the tail end of that conversation.

“I get it,” Eli said. “I just wanted to confirm, I didn’t need the entire history of-“

“So how was your first day?”

Ugh. “Fine. Everything was fine. This place is kind of weird.”

“You will get used to it.”

“I need a Mason jar.”

Wolf cocked her head at him. “What for?”

“‘Twenty-five cents for every time you ask Elder Sears about his accent’.”

Wolf laughed. Rebenok rolled his eyes.

Despite the bus _apparently_ occasionally coming as much as fifteen minutes early, on this particular day it was ten minutes late. And then the ride back to Salt Lake Central was roughly twenty minutes, assuming it took as long going to as it did from. Wolf sat up front, putting her bag on the seat next to her. Rebenok sat next to Eli, fencing him in by a window.

“What is… it like, anyway?” Rebenok said.

Eli blinked at him. “What is what like?”

“…out there. Outside of Utah.”

“What, you’ve never been?”

“No… I grew up here, in a small town - Delta. I moved here for this, like you did, I live with… family…” he coughed. “But I’d never been outside of Delta, but Salt Lake City… is not so different. So, all the way on the other side of the country…?”

Eli just shrugged.

“It is different, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. Everyone down there is Baptist, not Mormon. Or goes to a megachurch or something.”

“I honestly do not know how that changes things. I do not know any Baptists.”

Eli sighed. “I don’t know, maybe life outside of Utah sounds exciting for you, but you have no idea how spoiled you are out here… everyone being the same religion and all. Outside of Utah, there really… aren’t very many Mormons around. You end up being _the only Mormon someone knows_ for most of the people _you_ know.”

Rebenok gave him a blank look. “And…?”

“And it means that you’ve got the weight of the whole image of the Church every time you do _anything_. Everyone around you assumes that however you are is how all Mormons must be. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be under that kind of pressure for your whole life?”

“…”

Eli sank back in his seat, snorting and crossing his arms. “Of course, my _brothers_ never had any problem with it. No, they’re perfect. I guess it’s why _David_ got to actually go on a proselyting mission when they didn’t want _me_ and just shunted me off into this bizarre pilot program. …I couldn’t take it. The whole image thing was bad enough, but I was always getting compared to my brothers. I gave up.”

“What do you mean, gave up? You are here, aren’t you?”

“I don’t mean _left the Church_ gave up,” Eli said, annoyed, “I just stopped… well, caring so much. I ignored _For the Strength of Youth_ , that sort of thing. I got into fights at school, I swore, I watched R-rated movies-“ author some poorly-written erotic fanfiction, got into a semi-open and ill-advised relationship with another boy, “—I figured that if I was going to be an example of the LDS Church no matter _what_ I did, I may as well be the example that we aren’t perfect either and we don’t have to be.” He sighed. “We’re people too, was what I was trying to say. Flaw and vices and all, and sometimes we don’t clean up our acts because we don’t see why we have to, because we’re happy the way we are… my brothers can do what makes them happy… I’m not like them.”

“…I see.”

Eli sank further in his seat, dejected suddenly. “That was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Rebenok said, “I think I understand.”

“Hm.”

“I know I should not praise you for that but… that is kind of brave. I wish I could do that.”

“…what?” Eli sat up.

“Just- whatever I want, whatever makes me happy. Out here I would not tarnish anyone’s reputation but my own, but I still think I could not do that.”

“Ah… I guess that is sad.” He clapped a hand to Rebenok’s shoulder - Rebenok tensed, but Eli ignored it. “So that’s something else we have in common, then? Being imprisoned by other people’s expectations.”

“Why do you want so bad to find something in common with me…?”

Eli was promptly distracted, gluing himself to the window. “Th-that’s-!”

“Erm, yes,” Rebenok said, blinking. “The Salt Lake Temple.”

“I’ve— I’ve never seen it in real life before!”

“Hm? I thought you said you’d been out here before to visit family.”

“Yes but, not here!”

“Well, Temple Square is just a quick TRAX ride away from the train station…”

* * *

The first day ended with Venom picking Eli up from the local train station and the car ride back to the house passing more or less in complete silence. (Venom seemed to be constantly playing a classic rock station on the radio.) Quiet got back from work not long after Venom and Eli got home. There wasn’t much talking over dinner, just a rather abortive attempt from Venom to ask how Eli’s first day had gone, to which Eli just shrugged and said it was alright but he was tired.

Day two, Tuesday. The beginning of it was functionally the same as the day before, though it turned out Wolf was the only sister there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Apparently not everyone came five days a week like Eli, and Rebenok and Wolf, did.) Today’s assignment was dairy, with Rebenok assigned to produce, which initially confused Eli as to how Rebenok was supposed to train him when they were both on separate assignments but then he remembered that Wolf and Sister Whatsherface yesterday had had these same assignments but had worked together due to both assignments being in the same cooler.

“Butter goes there, yogurt there, sour cream and cottage cheese there, eggs there, white milk goes on these shelves and chocolate milk goes on _these_ shelves,” Rebenok said, then turned back to the trays of produce. The cooler was pretty much freestanding the back of the storehouse, and YCSMs entered through backdoors not visible to the patrons, who were separated from all the stocking stuff by the shelves. At first glance the YCSMs themselves wouldn’t be visible to the patrons, either. “All you really need to remember is to push older product forward before adding any new product - and when a pallet runs out, then it goes on rotation. Let it get very low in here before taking things from a new pallet.”

“Got it,” Eli said, pushing forward some things. “Seems simple enough.”

“Oh, but it is hard to keep up with. I would not worry if I were you, though. Just keep in mind how many things are in each box, because overstocking in here gets tricky.”

“Hmm.”

Since it was still early, and yesterday had seemed much busier than it actually was, the only thing that actually needed restocked was the eggs. Rebenok warned Eli as he walked out to get small blue cart from the warehouse and put the eggs on them instead of just carrying the box to the cooler himself. Because, he added, seemingly sensing that Eli was about to say he wasn’t going to have any trouble carrying a box of eggs fifty feet, the cart would give him someplace to the put the box while he stocked, since it was against health/safety regulations to put the box on the floor.

It was hotter in the warehouse than it was in the storehouse (probably because it was hot outside, Eli assumed it’d get pretty cold when the winter came) but Eli didn’t really register anything else about it since the carts were more or less right next to the door.

“Where do I put the box when it’s empty?”

“There is a pile of boxes next to the baler, just throw it on there.”

“Baler?”

“Big, green. Square. By the carts, you can’t miss it.”

Eli took the instructions literally, barely glancing in the direction of the baler before hurling the empty egg box in its general direction in a high arc. He turned around to go back into the storehouse before it hit the ground.

He did not hear the sound of it hitting the ground when he expected to.

“Eh?” Eli turned around, finally registering the baler. And the… gigantic pile of cardboard boxes. And the box he had just thrown stuck on a wire by it.

He ran back to the cooler. “Rebenok,” he said urgently, “have you _seen_ the-“

“Pile of boxes?” Rebenok said in a bored tone of voice, “yes, it is not _that_ bad.”

“What? There are so many of them!”

“Oh, you should see this place around Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

“…well, I think someone needs to move all those boxes _into_ the baler… who normally does that?”

“Normally it is whoever is doing meat, but since you don’t currently have anything to do, no one would object to you doing it.”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

Eli went back to the warehouse. He circled around the pile of boxes for a moment, then looked into the rather empty baler - just a layer of flattened cardboard on the very bottom, and otherwise _plenty_ of room for all these boxes to go… Eli grinned to himself.

He might actually have fun with this one.

…

“Sears… what are you doing?”

Eli looked over at Wolf. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Playing Tetris.”

Eli frowned at her. Well, in a sense, she wasn’t wrong. “Do people normally not do this?”

“Uh… no.”

“Well, they should. You can get a really impressive amount of boxes into this thing if you just put the smaller boxes in the bigger boxes first, and place them in carefully.”

“I see.”

Eli put a beef stew box in an applesauce box. It was a very tight fit but not to the point that it required much force, so the slide of cardboard against cardboard was actually quite satisfying. Somewhere in the back of his mind Eli wondered _Is this what sex is like?_ …though he also thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to have thoughts like _that_ around Wolf. She was too… cute… for that…

“Tetris or not, it looks like you need to compress this now,” Wolf said, walking around to the other side of the baler. “Close the gate for me, will you?” Eli complied. Once the gate was closed, Wolf turned the baler on with a key and simply hit a bit. A pneumatic press came down and flattened all the boxes Eli had just piled in. It was a noisy process. Eli committed what she’d just done to memory so he could do it as well in the future.

Oh, and after training he visited the secretary, a blonde woman named Diane, to get his bus pass. Nearly forgot about it.

Again the day ended with a silent car ride back to the house and an equally silent dinner. Venom worked late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so Quiet picked him up. Eli slunk up to his room immediately after dinner and blamed his exhaustion on suddenly jumping to a 40-hour workweek after essentially sitting around at home all day for a year.

Before he went to sleep, Eli scrolled through his email on his phone. Tuesdays were David’s p-days, when he was able to send weekly emails back to his friends and family. Seemed like he was having a good time in Finland. His spiritual thoughts at the end of the weekly updates Eli always found irritating, so that was why he always ignored them until later in the evening, when David was offline.

Today he had a separate email in his inbox, addressed individually to him.

> How is your mission going so far? Have you been reading Preach My Gospel? You should also send weekly updates to Mom and Dad. You’re a missionary now, so please act like one, instead of how you usually act.

Eli snorted and deleted the email without replying.

* * *

Day three Eli and Rebenok swapped their assignments from the day before. Stocking produce was even simpler than stocking dairy, though admittedly it was a bit difficult to move older product to the front and also when the product got _too_ old it got rather gross. To kill time in the cooler, Eli tried to making conversation with Rebenok, but Rebenok didn’t handle cold temperatures well - probably because he was incredibly skinny - so he wasn’t feeling very talkative.

Disaster struck around lunchtime in the form of there being no plastic forks anywhere in the breakroom.

“Looks like we are completely out,” Wolf said after checking in the warehouse. “The warehouse manager ordered more, though.”

“Thanks for checking, anyway,” Eli sighed, and pulled out two plastic knives, of which there were plenty. He took his noodles and sat across from Rebenok, as was (already) typical.

Rebenok squinted at Eli. “What are you…?”

“Chopsticks,” Eli said.

“…”

“I feel like a praying mantis,” Eli muttered at his lunch.

Again, it seemed he’d said something to catch Rebenok’s attention. “Is that a good thing?”

“Huh?”

“He looooves mantids,” Wolf interjected, sitting next to Eli with her own lunch (dinner leftovers that smelled absolutely delicious). “He keeps them as pets.”

Rebenok went a little pink under his mask, staring down at his lunch which he was just picking at as always. “I think they are cool…”

“Oh…” Eli tried to think of something to say. “Well, I mean, they are.”

Rebenok seemed cheered.

The Temple Square sisters entered the breakroom to eat their own lunch. Eli wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t acknowledge them outside of a mumbled “Hello” or not - just being around them made him feel sort of self-conscious. Of course he’d heard the long-standing rumor/urban legend that the Church purposefully sent the most attractive sister missionaries to Temple Square… at this point, a mere three days into his mission, he was 100% convinced that that was true. Wolf was smirking at him.

“It is okay,” she whispered to him as the Temple Square sisters were using the microwaves, “I think they are hot too.”

Eli was pretty sure he went bright red.

And then, in some bizarre attempt to assert his dominance(?), during training Eli slipped Wolf a note asking her if she’d be willing to go on a date with him the following weekend. He completely expected her to laugh it off but to his surprised she returned the note with “Of course” written on it, just over her phone number.

Dang. Now what was he supposed to do?

* * *

Heading home that day, Venom asked him how ‘work’ had been. Eli was, again, tired, so again all Venom got a shrug and a muttered “Fine.” Eli was aware that he was kind of… rejecting his uncle here, pushing him away when there was no real reason to. But… he was tired, he really didn’t feel good. Maybe his breaks during the day were too short? And anyway, it was probably natural that he felt awkward around Venom and Quiet, since he hadn’t actually talked to either of them for more than a decade before this… it was still just the stresses of moving, he was sure.

At least DD liked him.

“Oh, right,” Venom said suddenly after dinner as Eli was headed back upstairs to his room rather unceremoniously, “Quiet got some free tickets from work, do you want them?”

“Hm?”

Quiet pulled three yellow tickets out of her pocket and handed them to Eli. They were for the Utah Arts Festival, coming up that weekend.

“Oh… right. Yes, I think… I could use these. Thank you?”

Quiet nodded. Venom seemed marginally happy that he got a few sentences out of Eli. Eli supposed that this solved the problem of where he was supposed to take Wolf on a date, which he hadn’t considered up until now.

* * *

Eli woke up and felt like he hadn’t slept at all. He laid in bed for a moment, racking his brain for some reason why he was feeling like this; failing to think of anything all that physical, he thought maybe this was just emotional exhaustion - leftover depression and resentment from getting rejected by the missionary department, and maybe David’s email earlier in the week had thrown him off, too. Act like a missionary? Eli didn’t really _feel_ like a missionary. Any Mormon will tell you, that involved things like going to the MTC and living in a tiny apartment with your companion and _having_ a companion and knocking on doors and stuff. This just felt like… a job, except he didn’t get paid. But the few hours between when he got back from Welfare Square and when he went to bed he could just do the same things he did at home before he left.

Boy. If he was waking up with these kinds of thoughts, he already knew today wasn’t going to be good.

Today’s assignment was stocking meat. It was functionally identical to any other kind of stocking, except it was done in the freezer and always had two people doing it for safety reasons. As Eli’s trainer, Rebenok was the other one assignment, but evidently the freezer was absolute hell for him. He put on a thick coat (his own that he brought specifically, instead of the WELFARE SQUARE-emblazoned ones provided by the Church that Eli borrowed) and just sat on a pallet, shivering and watching Eli do all the work.

To be honest, Eli didn’t mind. He didn’t even think it was that cold in the freezer - only thirty below - and seriously doubted he even needed the coat, he was pretty sure he could just do it in his shirtsleeves. (He did, in fact, end up handing to coat over to Rebenok to use as a blanket for his legs. Rebenok looked at him like he’d lost his mind but didn’t object or anything.) Eli did wish that Rebenok would talk more but understood why he didn’t want to right now. It wasn’t important, anyway, Eli was just feeling a bit… lonely.

“Are you alright?” Wolf asked him when Liquid was slumped over over one of the breakroom tables during break.

“…no.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“No.”

“…well, I hear we have a special training today, so maybe that will cheer you up.”

“Nnn.”

No matter how he felt, Eli was definitely irritated that he looked mopey enough for someone to actually ask him if he was alright. Depression was one thing, but Eli would really rather not display it. Even if he’d never really been accused of (successfully) hiding his emotions. The rest of the morning, and lunch, he attempted to be just as… _cheerful_ as he’d been his first day. Rebenok kept throwing him _You don’t really expect me to believe you, do you?_ looks.

Training was indeed special that day, in that they were being taught by, instead of a random CSM, the storehouse manager - a graying Japanese-American man two heads shorter than Eli who was incredibly smiley and friendly. And instead of telling them about college or trade school or finances or job training or whatever (or, for some ungodly reason, _why bullying is bad_ , which had included a lot of pointed looks towards Wolf and Rebenok), the storehouse manager was taking them on a miniature field trip to the interior of the grain tower.

“This is just one of hundreds of grain towards the Church has scattered all around America,” the storehouse manager was explaining as they climbed the innumerable stairs towards the top. (Wolf threatened to beat anyone who looked up her skirt while she was climbing.) “Each tower, including this one, contains enough grain to make three sandwiches a day for every member of the Church for nine months.”

“That is a lot of bread,” Eli muttered. Rebenok shrugged.

Reaching the top netted them a spectacular view of the Salt Lake valley… spectacularly underwhelming, rather. SLC really was a small city. And being a desert, it was so brown and dry and Eli found himself _incredibly_ irritated at the others who cooed over the sparse trees and exclaimed how “green” the valley was. It _wasn’t_. It was, in Eli’s opinion, a podunk bowl of dust with a lake you couldn’t even use for drinking water.

“Can you see your town from here?” Wolf said.

“Hn. No.”

“Really? You can see every town in the valley from here - which direction is it in?”

“…north?”

The town Venom and Quiet lived in had no special landmarks, because as far as towns went it was just completely generic suburbia. That fact hadn’t bothered Eli at all until he found that that he couldn’t identify it from up here. How boring…

He leaned over the railing, sighing. Once again he felt very tired. Again, David’s fault, maybe. But it wasn’t like he could yell at him for making him feel bad with him all the way over in Finland.

“…seriously,” Wolf said, “are you alright?”

“Do you mind taking a rain check this weekend?” Somehow he just knew he wasn’t going to have to energy to go down to SLC again on a Saturday. Even if it meant wasting the tickets Quiet gave him, it wasn’t like either of them had paid money for it…

“Oh… yes, that is fine.”

“Depressed?” Rebenok said, rather insensitively in Eli’s opinion.

“You know what it is like at the very beginning… and he came from so far away, maybe he is just homesick.”

Eli stood up straight. “I am _not_ homesick,” he said stubbornly, “I’m just… ticked off. There’s a lot of things out here that bother me and some… family situations… argh. I just…”

“Do not stress yourself too much, Sears,” Rebenok said.

“ _Very_ helpful, Rebenok.”

Eli tried to relax on the train home but ended up falling asleep and nearly missed his stop. He didn’t mention any of it to Quiet.

* * *

Friday morning Venom tried saying “Have a good day at the storehouse” to Eli as he got out of the car for the train, but Eli didn’t even bother responding. He felt miserable. It seemed to have come on fast, but he was thinking it more likely that he’d really just never _stopped_ being miserable and the brief flurry of activity and good cheer that marked getting his call, coming out here, and the first few days of his mission was pretty much just a fluke. Dimly he hoped the fog of, yes, depression would lift again as he got more used to Utah, but… in the meantime, all he could do was scrape together some spare change and at least buy a decent breakfast at the Chick-fil-a across the parking lot from the train station. He actually quite liked ramen normally, but having it for lunch every day got tired and it didn’t help that he’d felt too distressed and uncomfortable to stick around for dinner yesterday, instead locking himself in his room and letting Quiet eat by herself. (Maybe that was why Venom had tried to be extra sociable this morning?)

Starting the day with a chicken biscuit, some hash browns, and orange juice didn’t do anything to improve his energy levels (effectively proving that it really wasn’t physical) but there did turn out to be a plus in that Rebenok was training him in the bakery today. The bakery was in the back of the warehouse and - understandably - required a hairnet, and the main challenge was the fact that it constantly smelled of _absolutely delicious_ baking bread. Eli could only imagine how crazy it would drive him if he were trying to work here on an empty stomach. How did Rebenok _stand_ it?

Before they could do anything with the bread, they were required to sit in the breakroom with some stake volunteers and watch a safety video. Rebenok pointedly looked away and occasionally parroted lines in a mocking voice.

“How many times have you seen that video?” Eli asked him.

“More than I can count. You end up watching it every time you come here.”

“It didn’t seem _that_ bad.”

“It gets worse every time you watch it. I swear that stupid giggle sound effect after the rule about horseplay haunts my nightmares.”

“Hm.” Eli and Rebenok put on aprons. “At the end of the video, didn’t it say we’re serving ‘people who never eat’? I know they’re poor and all, but _never_ seems like a strong word. They’d have starved to death.”

“The video says ‘people you’ll never meet’, Sears.”

“Oh.”

“…” Rebenok shook his head. “I thought the same thing the first several times I saw it, do not worry. Now come on.”

Hands washed and gloved up, Rebenok decided he and Eli would be at the end of the line, with Rebenok picking bagged loaves of sliced bread up off the conveyer belt and shoving them into the neck of a small machine to put twist ties on them, along with a volunteer; another volunteer took the twist-tied breads and put them in a plastic rack that fit ten loaves, and then Eli would pick up said rack and place it on a pallet. For the volunteers’ sake Eli tried to “act like a missionary” and smile, but ended up doing the work with a completely straight face.

Or rather a hollow, vaguely sour expression, which Rebenok commented on.

“I just haven’t been feeling very good lately,” Eli said stiffly, putting another rack on the pallet. “Don’t pester me about it.”

“…I don’t mean to pester you.”

“Hmph.”

Rebenok didn’t reply. Maybe, as Eli’s trainer, he felt a little responsible for his mood, but Eli didn’t need anyone other than him worrying about it. Also, it wasn’t like Rebenok didn’t have a bitter expression, too, though in his case it was probably that he’d heard the _I Love Lucy_ jokes the volunteers kept making a thousand times before.

After several hundred loaves of white bread, everyone took a break to wait for the wheat bread (which had been depanned while they were working on the white bread) to cool enough to get sliced and bagged. Unlike breaks in the storehouse, these lasted significantly longer than fifteen minutes. Eli regretted leaving his phone in his locker.

“Do you have a curfew?” Rebenok asked.

“Not really. Why?”

“Just wondering. Maybe you should do something after you leave here instead of just going straight home.”

“…? Oh, please. I’m too tired for that.”

“I just think that perhaps you might feel a little cheered if you pay a quick visit to Temple Square.”

Eli frowned. He didn’t know much about Temple Square except for that it was where the iconic Salt Lake Temple was. Other than that he just thought of it as a Church-run tourist trap - though he was aware that it was all free, except for, like, a gift shop or something. Wasn’t there a museum somewhere by it?

“It is just an idea,” Rebenok mumbled, apparently put off by Eli’s reaction.

“No… I think I could at least see it. Since I’ve never been before and all that… it might be interesting.” Though he’d definitely be exhausted when he got back to Venom’s house and would end up skipping dinner again… oh well, he could just eat on Saturday.

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?”

“I… not anymore.” He didn’t know much about girls but knew enough to know that Wolf was probably miffed with him for postponing their date, even if she wasn’t really invested in him, and even/especially if she wasn’t _acting_ like she was mad. “Why?”

“I just thought perhaps you would like to hang out sometime… outside of the Square? Here.” Rebenok gave him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “Er… text me, when you feel up to it.”

“…alright.”

“Okay,” said the woman who ran the bakery, coming back into the breakroom and clapping her hands, “back to work!”

According to Rebenok, the bakery usually did enough bread that they did white bread in the morning and wheat in the afternoon, with a lunch break between. (They nearly always did more white than wheat, though it wasn’t the bakers who made those decisions.) Today they were only doing enough bread for the morning shift, so they’d be done here by lunch; Rebenok decided to train Eli on the slicers. It was a very noisy machine that vibrated the bread-cutting blades when the foot pedal was pressed, and the loaves of bread were gravity-fed into the blades. The person running the machine just had to catch the sliced loaves and keep them together while they shoved them into bags. Rebenok stood nearby to put the bags on the conveyer belt for Eli - and check them for holes and such.

“Yes,” Rebenok said after a while, catching Eli’s expression, “these machines are hard on her back.”

“If they were just a few inches taller— all this bending over is what hurts.”

“I know. That is why I avoid these machines and just do the twist ties.”

“I thought that was because that one twist tie machine is installed too close to the other one and they need someone extremely skinny to operate it.”

“Well, that too. It gives me a good excuse, at any rate.”

“That’s fair.”

At the end of the shift each volunteer (and YCSM) could take home at least one loaf of bread from the reject pile. Eli grabbed one just because it was free, and he and Rebenok returned to the storehouse, where Eli put the bread in his locker. He’d just leave it over the weekend, he didn’t really think he had space in his bag this afternoon.

“Well,” Eli said to Rebenok after lunch (Eli picked at his food worse than Rebenok did) and training (which Eli fell asleep during), “since the bakery’s done for the day, what do we do?”

“Hosting,” Wolf answered before Rebenok could.

“Lovely.”

* * *

By the time they reached the end of the day Eli figured that Rebenok’s Temple Square suggestion was worth a shot — it wasn’t like he had anything to lose, really, and so what if he was on the verge of passing out by the time he got back to Venom’s house, it’d be the weekend and he could sleep in tomorrow. With that in mind he reaffirmed his decision to simply leave his loaf of free bread in his locker until Monday, since he didn’t want to cart it around downtown SLC, but he ended up putting it in his bag before he left for the bus anyway, purely on impulse. Wolf made fun of him for it but Eli was used to feeling self-conscious so it was easy for him to write it off.

The sky was gray and overcast as the missionaries waited for bus 509. Eli was pretty sure those were the first clouds he’d seen since he’d left home, and same with the hint of pre-storm humidity in the air - it was the first time all week the weather had been anything other than bone dry. A light drizzle started up as the bus was en route to Salt Lake Central station. Instead of getting on the northbound FrontRunner, Eli got on the only TRAX line out of Salt Lake Central - the blue line, to Draper. Rebenok waved as he left. Eli only barely glanced over his shoulder.

He hadn’t known it until he’d come out here, but riding public transit for the first time made Eli tense. He barely paid attention to the passing city or the other passengers in favor of focusing on the PA announcements of which stops were upcoming. The stop for Temple Square was, at least, named “Temple Square”, so that was easy, and since Salt Lake Central station was the blue line terminus it’d be easy to find the line back when he was done, at least. But in the end, when he stepped off the streetcar he was almost caught off-guard by the city around him.

It was… much nicer and cleaner than the area around the train station, and especially around Welfare Square. Not much loitering, almost no litter, and Temple Square itself was surrounded by a high wall over which only the tops of buildings were visible. Nearby were various Church buildings - Eli didn’t know what the other ones were, just the Family History Library and Church History Museums that had their names right on them — they were all imposingly large. Remembering the view from the top of the grain tower, Eli realized he was in the only part of the Salt Lake valley that had anything that could remotely qualify as skyscrapers.

He rubbed his hands together, looking around silently. It was still raining, a bit harder now and the rain itself was cold, but Eli found that sort of thing easy to ignore. He quickly found that while the walls around Temple Square were foreboding, they were dotted with large gates wide open to the public.

“Is there a map around here or something…?” Eli wondered to himself under his breath, looking around. There weren’t any little booths like seen at other tourist attractions; Eli supposed the point was to get visitors to talk to the sister missionaries and get a guided tour (and lesson about the gospel). He didn’t want to bother them, though, and felt awkward at the prospect that some might recognize him now or later, so instead he just wandered. A few of the buildings he did know on sight, or at least he recognized the Tabernacle, with its weird silver dome of a roof, and the visitors’ centers were labelled like the Family History Library had been.

The rain was starting to come down harder, though. That was probably why he seemed to be the only one out here at the moment. He quickly checked his bag for an umbrella, but the bread was in the way and he remembered he didn’t have one anyway — maybe he should have asked Venom to borrow one this morning? Had he known it was going to rain? …would Venom even loan him one, knowing Eli might lose it?

Getting soaked while wearing white clothing probably wasn’t the best idea, Eli realized belatedly. He ducked into the North Visitors’ Center to dry off and wait out the storm if it was short enough.

Oh, and he should probably text Venom to tell him he’d be late, too…

Sighing, Eli glanced around. Temple Square was a nice place and all, especially in the rain, but maybe he shouldn’t have taken Rebenok so seriously. The depression and pointless anxiety that had slowly built up again over the course of the week weren’t abating at all. If anything they were getting worse - in the presence of so many normal, proselyting sister missionaries Eli felt awkward and out of place, like everyone around him knew some big secret that he didn’t. Even the tourists also sheltering in the North Visitors’ Center were also in on it.

Wanting to escape, Eli went downstairs. In the basement of the building there were several museum-like exhibits about Book of Mormon and Old Testament prophets, complete with dinged-up ambiguously brown wax(?) figures. Eli skimmed over the plaques. Of course he was vaguely familiar with everyone depicted, but he’d never paid attention in Sunday school or seminary, only read the Book of Mormon once, and never read the Bible or Doctrine and Covenants. Maybe if he’d gone to the MTC he would have had the nitty-gritty knowledge of the gospel and history of the Church pounded into him but, really— after graduating high school he’d forgotten almost everything he learned, wouldn’t that be the same after a proselyting mission anyway? It’d just be cramming for a two-year-long test.

And instead he was here, anyway. In the end it would all work out the same, wouldn’t it? Did it even matter?

Eli felt terrible.

He went back upstairs and stared out the windows. It was really pouring now, he might be stuck in this visitors’ center for a while and avoiding talking to anyone might get difficult. He glanced up. There was a spiral staircase, beyond which was barely visible a ceiling brilliantly painted like the cosmos. Eli had a vague idea of what was up there - the famous _Christus_ statue. He’d, obviously, never seen it before in real life but he’d seen plenty of pictures. He’d known it was at Temple Square but didn’t realize it was in the top floor of the North Visitors’ Center.

Might as well go see it while he was here, then.

It was… smaller in real life. Only a little bigger than life-sized, though Eli had always assumed it was huge - probably because it always got photographed that way. In order to get the “proper” view Eli had to get down on his knees in front of it; fortunately, he was the only one up here currently, but he still got embarrassed about it and stood up again just to go sit on one of the numerous padded benches that faced the _Christus_.

And he just stared at it and listened to the rain outside.

What was he doing here?

Why the _heck_ did he leave his home and family and friends, come almost 2,000 miles to live with a couple he barely knew, just to get yelled at by cranky patrons, be categorized as mentally retarded, get stereotyped, lost in the culture, feel inferior to _normal_ missionaries, and just generally be miserable? Why did he think that was a good idea? This was a mistake. Why did he make this terrible decision? Did _he_ even make this decision…? He remembered Bishop Campbell’s words about who did: “ _Heavenly Father_ does.”

Eli stared up into Jesus’ marble face and wondered why His father would send him out here - would go so far out of His way to send him out here. Eli was only a week in but was already sure that he wasn’t—

He covered his face with his hands quickly. When had he gotten so overwhelmed, when had he started _crying?_

Eli rushed down the stairs and out of the North Visitors’ Center before anyone could stop him or even notice him. It was storming worse than before, wind whipping between the buildings and rain coming down in hard white sheets, practically blinding him. Eli broke into a run as soon as he’d cleared the doors. Within seconds he was completely soaked - he’d need all weekend to dry out his backpack and shoes again.

But at least in the rain, even if he did come across someone, they wouldn’t notice his tears, since his face was all wet anyway…

Of course, with all this rain (and the fact that he was unfamiliar with the city), he couldn’t go anywhere right now, let alone make it back to Salt Lake Central. Bewildered, he found that the outside wall of the Tabernacle had large alcoves, like doorways but without the doors. On one side of the Tabernacle they even protected him from the window, so Eli sought shelter there. Less exposed to the elements, Eli took a moment to try to calm down.

It didn’t work. He slumped to the ground, leaning against the wall and resting his forehead on his knees.

For most of the world, crying in public was shameful, and for men crying in general was harshly condemned. Mormons saw things a little differently, probably because every General Conference inevitably saw several of the highest authorities in the Church openly weeping at the pulpit. Moreover, new elders, homesick and discouraged, sobbing by themselves was such a common sight that there ought to have been a hymn about it.

“Troubles with your companion?”

Eli jumped, looking up in a shock. There was a brown-haired middle-aged woman standing next to him, closing her umbrella. Eli hadn’t heard her approach at all.

“Er… no,” Eli said, standing up and wiping his face quickly. “I… I don’t have a companion. I’m just a service missionary.” Very belatedly he realized that he’d forgotten to take off his nametag, and fixed that, shoving it in his pocket. He felt the abandoned Utah Arts Festival tickets in there and felt a pang. Poor Wolf… “I-I’m done for the day, I shouldn’t have even been…”

The woman gave him a scrutinizing look. “A service missionary, you said? What do you do?”

“I— I work eight hours a day at Welfare Square. We give free groceries to the poor, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, that sounds nice. …so I don’t think you’re ‘just’ a service missionary.”

“…what?”

“You aren’t ‘just’ anything,” the woman said, “it sounds like what you do is very important. You’re not ‘just’ saving lives or ‘only’ helping people when they need it most. You shouldn’t downplay that.”

“I…”

The woman looked out at the pouring rain, suddenly changing the subject. “So, where are you from? I’m a tourist from Boston. Shame about this rain, I thought Utah was a desert.”

“…I came out here from Atlanta. I’m not exactly _from_ there, though. It's just where my parents happen to live right now.”

“Still, you’re a long way from home.”

“I suppose.”

She looked at him again. “You should be proud of yourself,” she said.

“…”

“You came so far to do such wonderful things. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to decide to do this.”

Eli shrugged bitterly. “I _wanted_ to go proselyting,” he said, “like everyone else does. Right now my twin brother’s serving in Finland. He’s a _real_ missionary - I don’t think you understand, service missions are just what the Church does with all the rejects. They wouldn’t let me go on a real mission, so I just got stuck with this as a crappy consolation prize.”

The woman considered his words for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think the people who come to Welfare Square think of it that way.”

“They don’t know the truth. …the truth is that I couldn’t do any better. I’ve always been inferior to my brother and I’m always going to be inferior to my brother.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not part of your Church, but I think feeding people is more important than knocking on doors. And anyway, don’t you believe that it’s God that dictates where you go on a mission?”

“…yes…”

“If you don’t mind me saying, Elder, I can’t see why you would have been rejected for a proselyting mission. You seem pretty normal and sociable, and you were willing to come all this way anyway - that takes a lot of strength. I think you would have done alright on a mission like the one your brother’s on.”

“I… oh…” Eli flushed, and couldn’t think of a response.

The woman smiled. “So it seems to me that God had the Church reject you so that you could serve this sort of mission instead. You were put here for a reason.”

“…I… maybe. But… I just wish I could have… done better.”

“Oh, Elder. You don’t need to do better, you just need to do good. You’re doing fine exactly where you are.”

Eli had to stop and swallow hard.

No one had ever said that to him before.

All his life he’d been told he could do better, whether it was meant to be encouraging, to push him further, or if it was meant to be disparaging and telling him he’d never be good enough. But could always _do better_ , do _more_. ‘Exactly where he was’ had never been a good place for Eli. He could never rest, stay still, be content. He was never enough.

And here a complete stranger was telling him he _was_.

Without realizing it, Eli had starting crying again. He wiped his eyes with his arm, trying to stifle himself. The woman didn’t comment, and the storm died down, and she said goodbye and left. By the time Eli looked up again she was gone and he had no idea where she went.

Eli took a deep breath. The sun was starting to filter between the clouds and the sounds of the city were returning. Maybe he should take a stroll around this area for a bit before returning to the TRAX station.

He’d seen the homeless people begging outside of Temple Square on the way but hadn’t paid them any mind; now he did notice them, and remembered the loaf of bread he’d put in his backpack even though he didn’t need it. Maybe he’d had that impulse because there was someone who _did_ need it, it just wasn’t him. He asked a homeless woman if she was hungry and wanted some bread, and when she said yes he pulled out the whole loaf and handed it to her — her expression cycled through shocked, bewildered, disbelieving, and incredibly grateful in the space of a second. It was so funny Eli had to laugh. The woman immediately opened the loaf (the plastic bag had kept it dry in the rain) and began handing slices out to the other homeless people nearby, as Eli left, spirits lifted considerably.

He was doing fine exactly where he was.

Passing a fountain on the way towards the Beehive House, the sun finally broke through the clouds and drizzle enough that a brilliant rainbow arced over the skies of downtown Salt Lake City. Eli smirked. He often heard about the hand of God in people’s lives and how it was _subtle_ , but… well, Eli had never had much use for subtlety anyway.

“ _Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee_ ,” Eli half-sang quietly/mostly hummed to himself, not even knowing all the words, looking around the glittering city, “ _how great thou art, how great thou art_ …”

Back on the streetcar, Eli reached into his pocket for his phone to inform Venom that he was on his way back, and again felt the Utah Arts Festival tickets. He pulled them out and stared at them for a moment.

He was going to be out here for a year. He may as well make the most of it.

He group-texted Rebenok and Wolf. “I have three tickets to the Utah Arts Festival tomorrow, do you two want to come with me”

“Sounds fun,” Rebenok responded almost immediately.

“this had better not be that raincheck you mentioned,” Wolf replied a little after Rebenok did.

“No,” Eli texted back quickly, “I wouldn’t invite Rebenok along on our date”

“Shame,” Rebenok replied.

“fine, i’ll come,” Wolf said. “let’s all meet up at library square at ten tomorrow”

“Sounds good.”

Eli smiled to himself. Tomorrow would be fun. Maybe they could all get lunch at the festival, too. And this would establish a nice precedent for spending time together for the rest of their missions.

* * *

“How was it today?” Venom said as Eli got in the car.

“Fine,” Eli said.

There was a short pause. Venom didn’t press.

Eli decided to keep going.

“I was assigned to the bakery today.”

“Hm?”

“We sliced and bagged a couple hundred loaves of white and wheat bread, Elder Rebenok - he’s my trainer - showed me how to use the machines. There was a lot of volunteers working there too, they kept making _I Love Lucy_ jokes because I guess that show had an episode about an assembly line.”

“It does.” Venom seemed a little surprised that Eli was talking to him.

“The bakery has the most paid employees on the Square, I think. They’re alright. Apparently they start making the bread at four in the morning or so so that it will all be baked and ready to go by the time the first volunteer shift shows up,” Eli said. “So it smells very good there, and in the whole warehouse too. Oh and speaking of the warehouse, the other day I saw that there was a big pile of boxes next to the baler and I decided to—-“

The dam of mutual awkwardness broken, Eli talked Venom’s ear off the whole ride home, telling him about his mission so far, about UTA public transit, about his trip to Temple Square. Venom wasn’t talkative generally but he occasionally asked questions to nudge the conversation along.

“By the way,” Eli said back at the house, climbing the stairs, “I am going to that festival that Quiet gave me tickets for, Elder Rebenok and Sister Wolf and I are all meeting up at Library Square where the festival is so I’ll need to, er, get the eight-o-clock train out of Farmington station so I can be at the festival at ten? That’s when we’re meeting up—“

“I can give you a ride,” Venom said. “Did you eat already?”

“Eh? Oh, um, no-“

“Do you want dinner?”

Eli blinked. “Ah, no, I mean yes, I mean I’m not going up to my room for the rest of the afternoon, I’ll be right back down. Maybe we could watch a movie or something after dinner?”

“That sounds nice.”

“I just need to take care of this one thing.” Eli slammed the door behind him, pulled out his laptop, and sat on his bed.

And composed an email.

> Tales From Welfare Square: One week down, fifty-one to go

**Author's Note:**

> All pictures are my own, except for the one of the WFSQ grain tower, which is Church media. Anyway, the differences between the fic and real life, aside from the obvious:  
> Difference #1: My brother, who is two years older than me, did in fact serve a mission in Finland, but he was home by the time I got my call. (Also, I worked on getting my papers in for two years instead of one, but the missionary age for women is 19 as opposed to 18. Also also, it was depression & anxiety [mostly] that kept me from going proselyting, not bipolar disorder! …although the psyche eval coming back with “manic episodes” on it did happen.)  
> Difference #2: When I got the news from my bishop that I’d been rejected by the missionary department, I didn’t have the option of just walking back to class and seeing my parents. I was going to a YSA ward at the time, alone. I cried in my bishop’s office for 45 minutes until my dad could come pick me up.  
> Difference #3: Eli and Venom/Quiet’s relationship is way different from the kind of relationship I had with my own aunt/uncle. My aunt and I did… not get along. :(  
> Difference #4: Any scene that’s dependant on gender somehow, assume that in real life I was Wolf, not Eli. (Though, tbh, in this fic Eli = me at the beginning of my mission, Wolf = me at the end of my mission.) So I was the one who got asked out on a date and had my time and coupons wasted… although the scene in the cooler, with Eli trying to impress Wolf by getting things for her, I’ve… kind of been both of them… I could get most of the elders to do whatever I want, but I also tried to impress the sisters…  
> Difference #5: The Salt Lake Temple is indeed visible from bus route 509, but it’s from a way different angle - not nearly as close. Those pictures were actually taken from a different bus route, on my way back from the zoo one weekend.  
> Difference #6: Leaving my aunt’s house after waking up at 6:00 would actually get me to the storehouse before it opened, meaning I’d enter through the warehouse, so Eli not noticing the pile of boxes by the baler until he’s already working is just a narrative fudge so I could use that picture.  
> Difference #7: Actually, the bakery usually isn’t running on Fridays. That was just for the narrative. Also, re: the twist tie machine, I’m actually ~~Mantis~~ Rebenok there.  
>  Difference #8: Things have changed at the storehouse since the beginning of my mission. Nowadays they wear aprons, collapse the boxes before putting them in the baler instead of Tetrising them, stocking and hosting are _literally_ identical assignments, and they have big combined morning devotionals instead of afternoon trainings. Plus the zones and districts got completely restructured sometime after we were folded into the missionary department instead of the welfare department - I don’t even know how they work anymore.  
>  Difference #9: The climatic scene at Temple Square is a combination of two events that really happened to me several weeks apart. The events were pretty similar to one another, so that’s why I combined them. What the tourist woman ~~who is totally Para-Medic shh~~ says to Eli is as close as I can remember to what was said to me. That’s the part I cried while writing.
> 
> If you’re ever in Salt Lake City, drop by Welfare Square for a tour. And when the you get to the bishops’ storehouse, ask whoever’s at the front desk, whatever happened to all those origami cranes that used to be there?


End file.
